Team 4. Society and Religion in Late Second Temple Judaism

ABOUT
Team 4 will investigate changes in religious practices and ways of thinking that became more widespread and compelling in the Israelite religion in the Greco-Roman era, especially new ritual practices, dissolution of earlier institutions, new discourse and identity formation, economic and material changes in the changing circumstances. The aim is to address changes during the late Second Temple period in their own right (not only as background for rise of Early Christianity or Rabbinic Judaism) and to investigate the extent to which the practices and beliefs were not only reflecting, but also effecting and contributing to the social changes of the time. The source materials include relevant Hebrew Bible texts, Qumran manuscripts (Dead Sea Scrolls) and discoveries, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Greek textual evidence, as well as archaeological evidence that also illuminates the point of view of popular and every¬day “lived” religion. The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered as reflective of wider Judean literati, not merely a particular socio-religious movement.

Special methodological emphasis is given to finding useful social-scientific approaches in order to learn from other disciplines, to inform distinct areas of study, and help to communicate the results to separate fields. Research will be conducted in the following areas:

(1) Research into changes in rituals and religious practices. The focus is on ritual textual evidence and change (e.g., innovation and additions, ways of transmitting traditions, frequency and arousal, efficacy and meanings) as well as archaeological evidence connected to ritual practices (e.g., miqvaot, synagogues, other material culture). The team will incorporate theories and perspectives from ritual studies and from cognitive science of religion, which is a new emerging field that seeks cross-cultural patterns in religious thought and practice by studying the architecture of human mind. There is need to both analyse new textual evidence on some rituals (e.g., purification, exorcism, vows) and to theorize rituals as action (e.g., what kind of ritual action is purification).

(2) Research into intellectual changes. Texts of the Late Second Temple period testify to tendencies of both fixing the formulations of the divine will and of keeping it spontaneous and unpredictable. The study of such intellectual changes requires careful theorizing on central concepts such as Torah, wisdom, revelation, prophecy, divination, and authority. Special focus will be on investigation into the Greek influence and expression on Jewish writers.